Without knocking, Rico and Darth entered the office, a throwback with cheap vinyl blinds and a bookcase of outdated research - not a penny wasted on decoration. A U.S. flag stood in the corner.

Mr. Mark, really tall and really huge, stood up to greet them. "Nice of you two to grace us with a visit. Sit."

"We've had our hands full, sir," Darth said.

Rico and Darth had been dreading this meeting. Rico tried to convince himself that when he and Darth finally cracked the hacker hive, all would be forgiven. Or would it? When he'd asked Darth what to tell Mr. Mark if he asked about the BART "bomb," he'd said, "We give the least untruthful answer possible."

The agents eased into chairs. Still standing, Mr. Mark picked up a piece of paper off his spartan desk, which betrayed his military past. "I have a report regarding the drone Goldilocks. Know anything about that?"

"Yes, sir," Darth said. "We checked it out for Project Cyrano."

"Hmm," Mr. Mark said, reading off the paper. "The drone's control systems - destroyed. The imaging systems - unrepairable. The intercept systems - toast. How did you manage to crash a 100K drone and fry all the electronics?"

"We didn't crash it - the sleeper cell shot it down," Rico said.

"How do you know that?" Mr. Mark asked.

Rico paused. The only evidence they had was the sight of the hackers watching out a window.

"They shot first," Darth said.

Mr. Mark waved the report at them. "What? You're engaging in aerial combat in the middle of San Francisco?"

"We didn't shoot," Rico said.

"Goldilocks was armed?" Mr. Mark yelled, his face growing redder.

"No casualties, sir," Darth said.

"What a goat rodeo," Mr. Mark said.

"We're close to making arrests in this industrial spy ring," Rico lied.

"I've heard that before," Mr. Mark said. "And frankly, I'm tired of it coming out of my cost center. First the sequestration, and now you two checking whatever the hell you want out of the gear locker. You blew through our annual crypto budget to crack one Wi-Fi password, and you've been playing this 'Twilight' game for the past five years."

"It's called 'Midnight,' " Rico said, not amused that his boss would make light of his top-secret efforts to ferret out spies on computer games.

Darth shot Rico a look. For all of his rough edges, Rico thought, Darth was still a political animal.

"Cyrano's a hotbed of activity right in the Mission," Darth said. "The suspects aren't just working in Romania, and untouchable. It'll be a huge coup for our agency - we can show up the others. And we can offer the public some hard results for all our tracking. The people are sick of foreigners stealing our technology."

"Agents, my fun meter is pegged," Mr. Mark said. "You need to wrap this up, and make arrests or ... How would you feel about crosswalk duty at Lowell High School?"

Rico glanced at the floor. Lowell duty sounded like a plum assignment compared with what would happen after Mr. Mark found out that the alleged "bomb" on BART was actually a bug - and traced it back to Darth and Rico.

"The CEO of Jade Software appears to be involved in this," Rico blurted out. Rico knew Darth was going to kill him - they'd agreed not to play that card since they had nothing on Roger Martin yet.

"Really?" Mr. Mark rubbed his chin. "Why would Roger Martin be hanging out with terrorists at a broken-down hacker hostel?"

"He appears to have been recruited by the Queen Bee of the sleeper cell," Darth said, apparently on board. "He was even present when something big exploded in the apartment - probably testing weapons."

Mr. Mark drew a breath. "You have two weeks to wrap this up. And that's final."

Austin stood on a ladder taping black plastic over the A T 101 kitchen windows, while Peyton, Beth, Noah and Devesh ate scrambled eggs at the breakfast nook table.

Peyton's head was splitting from the blaring, industrial electronic music that Austin had piped in since the drone downing incident. But that was just the beginning. On a whiteboard he'd made a list: jam radio frequencies, hang fish line in flight path, ready fire hose, make more microwave weapons.

Suddenly, the high-voltage Tesla coil, attached to the curtain rod, showered them with sparks.

"You're going to get us killed!" Peyton shouted over the music.

"Ah!" Austin cried. "So now you're concerned. A laser is hanging over my head every night, and no one thinks that's a problem!"

"You're acting crazy," Beth said. "How are we supposed to strategize if we can't talk over your playing Slipknot and Butthole Surfers at the same time?"

"It's not music," Austin said. "It's interference. If there's another bug in here, no one will be able to hear us."

"Our Internet's so slow we can't work," Devesh said.

Austin had written a program that continually downloaded sketchy content from websites all over Eastern Europe and the Middle East "to overwhelm the perpetrators."

"What the - ?" Noah yelled suddenly, staring at his phone.

"What?" Peyton asked.

"The BART terrorist attack. BART police are calling it an 'internal communication error,' " Noah read from his phone. " 'The device was inadvertently left on the train from a recent terror attack simulation.' "

"Whoo hoo!" Devesh said. "How lucky is that?"

Austin glared at him: "You don't get it, do you? This is way worse than before."

"Let's not jump to any conclusions here," Beth said.

"This is a cover-up," Austin said. "The bad guys who are after us are so powerful, they have the ability to make major messes like this one go away."

"Lady and gentlemen, we are dealing with a three-letter agency," Devesh said.

The hackers all looked at each other.

"We need a promise - a pact," Austin announced from atop the ladder. "That no one says anything about any of this. We just have to carry on like nothing's happened, because we've done nothing wrong."

"She's right," Peyton said. "We'd have to disclose that we're under siege. What if they send another drone?"

"We act as surprised as the new person will be," Austin said. "Get it? Is everyone in?"

"Aye" came from everyone, except for Beth.

"I don't like it," she said.

"Well, you don't have to like it," Austin said. "You just have to agree not to tell anyone. Especially not Roger Martin."

Saturday: Roger has some questions for Beth.

Summary: Good friends Peyton and Beth live with their fellow hackers at the A T 101 hostel in the Mission. In recent weeks, they have been spooked by a mysterious drone, a bugging device, and an eerie SUV that keeps circling the hostel. So far, the hackers have not had a good look at their tormentors, who are about to hold a secret meeting with their boss.

Click City, which concludes in July, runs Wednesdays and Saturdays in Datebook.